Volume controls will mostly adjust the level a fixed dB value in an upward or downward direction, giving the hearing aid user the capability to adjust the sound level to fit both low and high level environments. The adjustment is often made stepwise with a predefine step size, but can also be purely analogue with infinite steps.
The improvement to the normal volume control, which is proposed here, is to differentiate between adjusting the volume up and down, such that an adjustment to increase the gain will be different from an adjustment to decrease the gain. Many hearing aid users report that they prefer a volume control that is easy accessible because this enables them to turn down the volume faster in environments with too loud sounds.
But to turn the volume down fast also depends on the step size used for the given hearing aid.
It is therefore an advantage to have a large step size when regulating the volume down. In the known hearing aids this means that the upward step size also becomes large because the hearing aids doe not differentiate the step size for up and down regulation.
And the users do not want large step sizes when regulating the volume up, because this increases the risk of adjusting to a too loud volume setting.